One of the most exciting products of a ten year study, commended for its originality and innovation, is a set of five practical principles, to enhance community development and project management. These principles might make development practitioners’ work clearer. The application of the principles in a series of diverse case studies reveals wider reaching implications for future research and practice.

One of these is the generation of ‘inhabit-ability’, a state of being which allows a particular place to be better inhabited, following an intervention. By intervention, we mean the act that modify (or hinder) a place, event or set of social circumstances. The concepts offer the potential to move beyond the cynicism and sense of dilution evoked by the word ‘sustainable’.

The overarching aim is simple; to assist the design of efforts to make living in a particular place better for those who are actually there. How can we deeply consider the impact on human and non-human stakeholders, and acknowledge the voices in the community of people and species affected, especially those at the margins?

The principles are a set of five short statements. Grounded in an extensive theoretical analysis, the principles have been analyzed in four differing contexts; community health, […]